#FlockSafety Flock cameras (from the company Flock Safety) are automated license plate readers (ALPRs). They are small, often solar-powered black devices mounted on poles, street signs, or utility poles along roads, at intersections, neighborhood entrances, parking lots, and sometimes private properties. /nytimes.com/ --- What they capture When a vehicle passes (typically within ~75 feet, even at high speeds), the cameras take multiple still images and use AI/computer vision to log: License plate number (including partials) Make, model, color, and body type Distinctive features ("vehicle fingerprint") such as bumper stickers, roof racks, dents, scratches, trailers, or bike racks Timestamp and location Flock states the systems focus on vehicles, not people, and do not use facial recognition. Images of pedestrians or other details can still appear incidentally. Data is uploaded to Flock's cloud platform and is searchable. Default retention is often around 30 days (configurable by the customer). /flocksafety.com/ --- Scale and use As of mid-to-late 2026 reporting, Flock has deployed on the order of 120,000+ cameras across 49 U.S. states, partnering with thousands of law-enforcement agencies, cities, businesses, HOAs, and others. The network processes billions of vehicle scans per month. Agencies can search locally or across a broader national network of participating cameras, and receive real-time alerts for vehicles on "hot lists" (stolen cars, wanted persons, Amber Alerts, etc.). /nytimes.com/ Law enforcement and the company highlight successes in recovering stolen vehicles, locating missing people, and solving crimes. Critics and civil-liberties groups argue the dense network creates a de-facto national movement-tracking database without warrants, enabling detailed reconstruction of where people drive (home, work, medical visits, etc.). --- Controversy Key concerns include: Mass surveillance / lack of individualized suspicion. Data sharing across agencies (including reports of immigration-related or other sensitive searches) Documented misuse by individual officers (e.g., stalking partners or others) Potential for mission creep and errors (misreads leading to wrongful stops) Private entities also deploying the same tech This has led to public backlash, mapping projects (e.g., DeFlock), vandalism of cameras in some areas, lawsuits challenging Fourth Amendment implications, and numerous cities or towns cancelling or declining to renew contracts. /nytimes.com/ Flock positions itself as a public-safety tool focused on objective vehicle evidence with local control and privacy safeguards. Opponents view the rapid nationwide expansion as an invasive, hard-to-opt-out surveillance infrastructure. That's the core of what "flock cameras" refers to in current U.S. discussion. If you're asking about a specific city, how to identify/locate them, legal status in a particular place, or something else, give more details. --- Who owns "Flock Safety"? Flock Safety (legally Flock Group Inc.) is a privately held company. It is not publicly traded and has no single corporate owner or parent company. /revenuememo.com/ Founders It was founded in 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia, by three Georgia Tech alumni: Garrett Langley (CEO and the most visible public face; reported as the largest individual founder shareholder) Matt Feury Paige Todd The founders retain significant equity (various estimates place the combined founder stake in the roughly 15-25% range after multiple funding rounds, though exact figures are not public). /canvasbusinessmodel.com/ Major investors Ownership is shared among the founders, employees (via option pools), and a group of venture capital and growth investors. Prominent backers include: Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) - a leading and repeat investor (led major rounds including the 2021 Series D and the 2025 Series F) Bedrock Capital Tiger Global Management Matrix Partners Meritech Capital Others such as Greenoaks Capital, Founders Fund, Sands Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Y Combinator, Initialized Capital, and more The company has raised well over $650 million (some trackers put total funding near or above $1 billion) across multiple rounds. Valuations reported in 2025-2026 have ranged from about $7.5 billion (after a $275 million Series F in March 2025) to roughly $8.4 billion in subsequent secondary activity./revenuememo.com/ Exact ownership percentages are not publicly disclosed because it is a private company. No single investor is known to hold a controlling majority; control rests with the combination of founder leadership and the major VC stakeholders who sit on or influence the board. --- How many municipalities have contracts with Flock Safety? There is no single exact public figure specifically for "municipalities" (cities, towns, and similar local governments), but the best available numbers from Flock Safety and contemporaneous reporting put the scale in the thousands. Key reported figures (as of 2025-mid-2026)More than 5,000 law enforcement agencies - This is the figure most frequently cited by the company and in news coverage. It includes municipal police departments, county sheriffs, and other public agencies. /nbcnews.com/ More than 6,000 communities - Flock and secondary sources (including Wikipedia summaries of company statements) regularly use this broader term. "Communities" encompasses municipalities plus homeowners associations, private neighborhoods, schools, businesses, and other non-governmental customers. /roadsigns.com/ Earlier company statements referenced roughly 4,000-5,000 cities/communities; by 2025-2026 the "6,000+ communities" and "5,000+ agencies" language became standard. Additional context Crowd sourced mapping projects (e.g., Flock Scanner) have documented cameras in about 1,700+ U.S. cities as of September 2026, but this is acknowledged as a lower bound because many smaller or less-mapped places are missing. /flockscanner.com/ Dozens to low hundreds of municipalities have canceled, rejected, paused, or declined to renew contracts in 2025-2026 amid privacy and data-sharing concerns (trackers from groups such as DeFlock cite figures in the 50-80+ range for 2026 alone, with higher cumulative totals in some counts). New contracts have continued to outpace cancellations according to the company. /yahoo.com/ Bottom line: Flock Safety works with thousands of municipalities (the precise municipal-only subset sits inside the >5,000 law-enforcement-agency and >6,000-community totals). Exact counts fluctuate with new contracts, renewals, and cancellations and are not published as a precise running municipal tally by the company. --- How many stolen cars did Flock Safety cameras recover? There is no single, publicly reported nationwide total for the exact number of stolen cars recovered with the assistance of Flock Safety cameras. What Flock and agencies do report Flock's own 2025 Impact Census (based on a survey of nearly 700 law-enforcement agencies) states that: More than 40% of customer agencies (specifically ~42% of those responding on this metric) reported that Flock technology was involved in recovering half or more of the stolen vehicles in their jurisdiction. /flocksafety.com/ An independent study of 216 agencies found that motor-vehicle theft dropped about 11% in the first year after fixed ALPR cameras (including Flock) were deployed, and arrests for vehicle theft rose 15.9%. It did not publish a cumulative recovery count. /flocksafety.com/ Local / agency-level examples (illustrative, not national totals) Individual departments have published their own figures, such as: Whitehall, Ohio PD: over 600 stolen vehicles recovered since implementing Flock. /flocksafety.com/ St. Johns County, Florida: 597 stolen vehicles recovered (company-shared figure). @flocksafety Richmond, California PD: 258 stolen vehicles recovered. @flocksafety Fresno, California: 224 stolen vehicles recovered in one recent year (partial-year reporting). @rahul These are jurisdiction-specific and cover different time periods, so they cannot simply be added together. Bottom line: Flock cameras are widely used to generate real-time alerts and investigative leads that help recover stolen vehicles, and many agencies credit them with a substantial share of their local recoveries. However, the company has not released (and independent sources have not compiled) a verified cumulative national total of vehicles recovered specifically because of Flock systems. --- How many wanted people did Flock Safety cameras locate? There is no single, publicly reported nationwide cumulative total for the number of wanted people located (or arrested) with the assistance of Flock Safety cameras.What is available Flock and its CEO have shared daily "wanted-person vehicle hits" (alerts generated when a vehicle associated with a wanted individual passes a camera):Examples from mid-2026 posts include roughly 1,300-1,700 wanted-person vehicle hits in a single day (alongside other alert categories such as stolen vehicles and missing persons). /x.com/ These are real-time alerts, not confirmed locates or arrests. Not every alert results in a successful location or apprehension. Flock's broader 2025 Impact Census emphasizes support for more than 1 million investigations overall and roughly 10,000 missing persons located, but it does not publish a parallel national figure specifically for wanted persons. /flocksafety.com/ Local / agency-level examples Individual departments have reported their own results, for instance: Whitehall, Ohio PD: 261 wanted individuals identified (alongside other metrics such as vehicle recoveries). /flocksafety.com/ These are jurisdiction-specific and cover different time periods, so they cannot be aggregated into a national total. Bottom line: Flock cameras generate thousands of daily alerts on vehicles linked to wanted persons, and agencies credit the system with helping locate and arrest suspects in many cases. However, the company has not released (and independent sources have not compiled) a verified cumulative national count of wanted people located or taken into custody specifically because of Flock systems. --- How many amber alerts did Flock Safety cameras solve? There is no single, publicly reported nationwide cumulative total for the exact number of AMBER Alerts resolved with the assistance of Flock Safety cameras. What is available from Flock and partners In a 2024 company announcement about its partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), Flock stated that over 100 missing children cases had been solved with the help of its LPR systems since the partnership began in 2021. This figure includes (but is not limited to) AMBER Alert cases. /flocksafety.com/ Flock's broader 2025 Impact Census estimates that its technology helps locate approximately 10,000 missing persons per year overall (roughly 27 per day), but this is not broken out specifically for AMBER Alerts. / flocksafety.com/ Individual daily or case-level examples are occasionally highlighted by the company or CEO (e.g., one AMBER Alert resolved on a particular day in July 2026, with child rescues noted in specific cities). /newsbreak.com/ Documented examples Flock and law-enforcement agencies have publicized multiple specific AMBER Alert successes in which LPR cameras provided key vehicle locations or real-time alerts, including cases in Colorado (multiple in late 2025-early 2026), Florida, Alabama, and others. These are individual success stories rather than a running national tally. /flocksafety.com/ Bottom line: Flock cameras are integrated with AMBER Alert systems and have been credited with assisting in the recovery of children in dozens to low hundreds of cases (with the "over 100 missing children" figure as the most concrete company-reported number covering the partnership period). However, neither Flock nor independent sources publish a precise, verified cumulative count of AMBER Alerts specifically solved or resolved solely or primarily because of the cameras. 1. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/red-and-blue-america-have-found-something-to-agree-on-flock-cameras-must-go-765cd0b2 2. https://www.23pastures.com/23notes/FlockSafety.txt